Presently, coin operated machines such as gaming machines have one or more counters which sequentially count various machine events. The particular events counted may be such as the total number of coins inserted, and the number of coins involved in a given cycle. Counters are also frequently provided to monitor the payout process of the machine, the passage of coins to a "drop" (profit) unit, and the number of times the door to the machine is opened. Thus, frequency coin machines in which substantial amounts of coins are processed along several internal paths will have a number of individual counters whose counts must be read, recorded and analyzed from time to time. This is usally done by opening the machine and manually recording the readings of the counters. Such manual recording lends itself to numerous errors because the reader may inadvertently incorrectly transcribe the reading, or may fraudulently incorrectly record the readings. Additionally, the need to open the machine to read the counters increases the risk of theft of the coins contained in the machine. For example, in some machines a portion of the machine deposits can be removed and the counter readings can be adjusted to offset for the theft.
An object of the present invention is to provide a machine event reading system which permits easy; tamper-proof transcription of the machine operations and transfer of the data to equipment for processing without compromising the security of the machine, or of its data, or of its contents.
Another object of this invention is to utilize counter means which respond unidirectionally to pulses derived from the occurrence of an event. Thus, the system's readings cannot adjustably be lowered. Its readings are suitable for definitive processing without further treatment in a computer or otherwise.